Albert A. Michelson, the son of Samuel Michelson and Rozalia Przyłubska, was born in Strelno, Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (modern-day Strzelno, Poland). As a German-born Polish American physicist, he is especially known for his work on measuring the speed of light and his Michelson–Morley experiment. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907 and at the same time became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in science.
The Michelson–Morley experiment was conducted in 1887 in the collaboration of the Nobelists and his colleague Edward Williams Morley. They investigated the expected motion of the Earth relative to the aether, the hypothetical medium in which light was supposed to travel, resulting in a null result. Michelson continued with the experiment and repeated it more precisely but he could not find the ability to measure the aether.
However, the Michelson–Morley results were immensely influential in the physics community, leading Hendrik Lorentz to devise his now-famous Lorentz contraction equations as a means of explaining the null result.
#ThrowbackThursday: A group of distinguished American scientists with Professor Albert Einstein on Jan. 16, 1931 in California. Left to right are M. L. Humason, Edwin Hubble, Charles St. John, Albert A. Michelson, Albert Einstein, William Wallace Campbell, and Walter S. Adams pic.twitter.com/lu1FxHpAw6
— Albert Einstein (@AlbertEinstein) June 6, 2019
The experiment also influenced the affirmation attempts of peer Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and special relativity, using similar optical instrumentation. These instruments and related collaborations included the participation of fellow physicists Dayton Miller, Hendrik Lorentz, and Robert Shankland.
Check the video with the explanation of the experiment below ⤵️